


west coast pheromones

by solipsismlemonade



Category: Original Work
Genre: California, Hospitalization, Multi, Necromancy, Open Ending (for now), Original Characters - Freeform, Original work - Freeform, Plant Magic, Skeletons, Urban Fantasy, a bi woman, cool magic system!, corpses!, flower names, future california, many plants!, many skeletons!, mature for language and violence and dead people, more tags coming soon to a theater near you, morphine addict / recovering morphine addict, necrobotany, not a ton of gore but the warning is there anyway, poc characters, references of drug use / abuse, silver - Freeform, suicide + depression references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-22
Updated: 2020-04-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:49:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23239480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solipsismlemonade/pseuds/solipsismlemonade
Summary: Azi took a generous step back and hooked a thumb back in a pocket again, watching a sand-stained skeleton claw its way onto the sand, skull empty-eyed and grinning. Oh, yeah. Oh, hell, yeah. Another followed in quick succession – missing a few ribs – and Azi let out a quick, exhilarated laugh as she took the two of them in.“Look at you,” she said, tilting her head to get a good look at them, eyes and teeth gleaming in excitement. One of them must have been a female, only standing at 5’3 and with the characteristics Azi knew to mark – the rounded skull, wider hips, more delicate points. The other stood at 6 fuckin’ 4, a regular freak of nature. She wanted to yell something. She wanted to scream her triumph out loud, be a thunderstorm on the clear-skied beach. “HOT SHIT, BABY!”The skeletons appreciated this, she could tell.AKAbaby, don't you know you are stardust - azalea parrish and several grassy skeletons vs the worldirregular updates and completion 87% guaranteed
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3





	1. brush it off like it's sawdust

**Author's Note:**

> californa girls - nombe  
> bad & boujee - migos (can't touch this remix)
> 
> i've never been to california, can you tell? enjoy and please comment if i missed anything. not sure if unspecified city in cali has a subway system but new york sure does!

“Necrobotanist,” Azi corrected, one long, brown leg lolling off the white wall she sat on. “’m a necrobot. Corpse gardener. Pine thumb. Whatever.” There were miles of bronzed, rich skin on display – the glossy expanse of her midrift, arms bare to the shoulders, long legs akimbo and making the chipped, faded paint of the wall look even whiter than it should have been. Tattered stonewash jean shorts pressed flat against the sun-hot stone and a white tube top looked blinding next to deep umber skin, ripened into something glossy and eye catching by the sun.

The phone, flat between her legs, screen reflecting the glare of the California sun, let out a disgruntled fuzzing sound from the other end. Blue waves crashed into the rocks below, looking like they were painting the moon-grey rocks a slick, shining green. Azi could feel the hum of the algae all the way from down here, a comforting, small sound at the back of her thumb. She picked at a hangnail that wasn’t there, mouth twisted into something too pretty to be a sneer and too sharp to be a smile.

“ _That’s alright. We’ll take any type of necro. Where did you study?_ ” The phone asked. The voice on the other end of the phone sounded like it had never met the sun or waves, never felt grass or palm leaves or sand alive with promise.

“Two years at Kalerca. Two at San Diego.” Azi shrugged a bare shoulder, sliding down until the length of her spine aligned with the line of the wall and the V of her thighs bracketed the phone on both sides. “I gotta degree in it if that’s what you’re asking.” And it had taken every fucking inch of effort that Azalea could bear to put in, every inch she could take. Sweat and blood and tears, the whole nine fucking yards.

“ _It is, a little_ ,” the phone admitted in a dry, tinny voice. Azi was finding it harder and harder to concentrate on it, not when the sun was blazing overhead and a breeze was whipping at her scalp and there were honest to god _bones_ buried under the surf. That was why she was here, really. The call would end and Azalea would go dig up a skeleton, maybe two.

“Well, there’s your answer. Am I hired yet?” Azi asked. It was by far the _least_ formal interview she’d ever had, but the voice on the other end of the phone call had insisted on it. _We want you,_ it had said. _We want you as you’ll be any other day. Honest answers, please, and if you have any questions let us know_. It was hard to talk to someone like they were an actual human when they used the royal fucking ‘we’.

“ _You know what, we think you might just be. We’ll keep in contact, Azalea. Thank you for following up. Have a nice day._ ”

Azi mumbled an approximation of a returned sentiment, something polite and automatic. She was already sitting up and swinging her legs over the edge of the wall, pulling off the heavy silver watch on one thin wrist and laying it out on the wall, tucking her phone in the back pocket of her shorts.

Azalea thought of her green, empty apartment and the skeletons waiting for her, and she thought that she might just die from the feeling of – something. There was too much and she was feeling it all and Azalea wanted to put an end or at least a pause to it. The sky was too blue or maybe to empty and the sun was burning its handprint into her forehead and cheeks; Azi wanted to be cold, or maybe just warm; she wanted dark and quiet and numb, numb, floating and so light that air dragged her down.

She dragged the flat of her palm across the puckered, shiny scars marking the crook of her knee and looked down at the beach, eyes narrowing.

There were skeletons to be had down there.

The tumble down the scree was almost as painful as Azi had been expecting. She took one wrong step and treacherous sand slid out from under a bare, callused foot; Azi went ass over tits in an ungainly somersault down a pebble-and-sand slope, interspersed with tough desert grass and other weird, beautiful, wiry plants.

Azi ended up on her back, sky kaleidoscoping into propriety above her, sun and surf pinwheeling around her as she laughed and laughed. The long graze along her calf sealed up, grit and grass dropping out as she sat up and ran her fingers between her Bantu knots. Having her hair up made her head feel suspiciously light and every time she put her hand up, there was another reminder of it whenever she tilted her head back to feel the sun. Azi spat out a mouthful of blood – she’d bitten her tongue near in half along the way – and laughed again, loud and bright enough to rival the sun.

Bright red blood spattered the scree, startling in its intensity. Her leg was healed already, thanks to the silver – it was a reflex by now, to heal whatever was hurting. Azalea wasn’t sure if she liked it or not, but –

God, that had been fun. She stood and swayed in the wind and surf, feeling fine sand under her feet almost hot enough to hurt. Cold silver marched up both ears in twin lines and a silver ring trying its best to be unobtrusive winked from the side of her nose. The twin bars in one eyebrow were less obtrusive, as was the lip ring. That one was small, though; she’d mainly gotten it to piss Alder off. Azi brushed pale sand off herself and started to walk.

The tug was easier to track as she got closer; seaweed sung a blurry song to her out in the waves but Azi ignored it to walk a mostly-straight line all the way past the tide line to dig a silver-painted toe into wet, packed sand. Yeah. Yeah, this was more like it. A frisson of delight shuddered through her from toes to crown and it almost made her forget the tingling ache behind her eyes.

Azalea took a step back and hooked her thumbs into her pockets, standing loose and easy as she looked down at the sand, eyes half-lidded and the corner of her bottom lip caught between her teeth as she contemplated the best way to dig up a skeleton that was, by her measurements, almost five feet under packed beach sand and almost thirty years old. Old enough to not be all icky with bits hanging off.

She went with the simplest way, in the end. Azi crooked a finger at the sand. “ **Get up** ,” she told the old bones. The silver grew frigid in a flash and Azi let a triumphant, gleaming grin spread across her face. Nothing happened for a few seconds – on the surface. Then the sand began to shift and crack, boil like something was coming alive. Azi took a generous step back and hooked a thumb back in a pocket again, watching a sand-stained skeleton claw its way onto the sand, skull empty-eyed and grinning. Oh, yeah. Oh, hell, yeah. Another followed in quick succession – missing a few ribs – and Azi let out a quick, exhilarated laugh as she took the two of them in. Two! Imagine that. The sun warmed her now, and the surf pushed against her bones – in and out – that reminded her of a pulse, steady, steady.

“Look at you,” she said, tilting her head to get a good look at them, eyes and teeth gleaming in excitement. One of them must have been a female, only standing at 5’3 and with the characteristics Azi knew to mark – the rounded skull, wider hips, more delicate points. The other stood at 6 fuckin’ 4, a regular freak of nature. She wanted to yell something. She wanted to scream her triumph out loud, be a thunderstorm on the clear-skied beach. “HOT _SHIT_ , BABY!”

The skeletons appreciated this, she could tell.

“Alright. We can name you. Byron,” she said, pointing at the tall guy. The name was vaguely familiar, a leftover remnant from her high school days. “And, uh… Cam. Yeah, why not.” There was nothing really living out here on the sand, nothing alive – plant-wise – that Azi could use, so she led her clattering skeletons back up to the scrubby grass. They were otherwise silent, from the rustle of sand pouring out from impossible joints and eyeholes.

Azi stopped, turned around a few feet away, framed the two of them with a pair of hands – thumb and forefinger at right angles, pointed up to the unforgiving sun. The skeletons waited as tough, dry grass wound up their collective tibiae to reinforce joints and the tensile strength of thirty-year bones semi-eroded with salt and sand. They were in an awful state but that was how Azi liked her skels; utterly wrecked. It made more room for the green.

“Extra arms,” she said after a moment. Byron was a spindly terror, yeah, but she could definitely put the fear of GOD into anyone with another set of arms; she’d been waiting ages to use the pair she had lying on her desk at home. “And spines where your knuckles are. Wolverine-style. Fuck, yeah. Cam, you can have reinforced ebony wood, yeah? And… what do we want?”

Azi contemplated the two skeletons patiently waiting before her. Both had strands of tough, scrubby grass wound around their long bones and wiring joints together, providing full articulation and more certainty to their movements.

“Poison,” she said, snapping her fingers. “Yeah. Yeah, manchineel and hogweed. Okay, I’m a genius. Time to go home.”

The subway was a chore but people had seen weirder things than a tall black girl, sun-gleaming and wind-scrubbed, tailed by two grassy skeletons. It was empty enough that Azi didn’t have to fight anyone for space and the skeletons kept everyone at a good space away; that was always an upside. She rubbed an old, puckered scar on the inside of her elbow absently, eyeing up Byron. He was a tall fucker and no mistake about that. Made Azi feel – powerful, in a way. None of her other skels were that tall or broad-shouldered. It was making the other passengers nervous, throw glances at her over their turned shoulders, eyes darting and shifting.

Azi got off on the next stop, skeletons clattering out behind her. She’d have to fix the noise; it was gonna be a problem.

Halfway between the subway stop and her apartment, she got a phone call.


	2. a liar full of promise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azi also had five skeletons, counting her latest acquisitions. Cam and tall Byron, skinny Fen and chipped Aztec, and her first – stolen unceremoniously from a cemetery at 3 am on new year’s day; Searchlight.

Halfway between the subway stop and her apartment, she got a phone call.

“Fuck off,” she said very clearly, because she knew Alder had a hearing problem.

“ _You don’t even know what I was gonna say_ ,” Alder replied, tinny and faint from where Azalea had her phone pressed against an ear.

“No, and I say it again: fuck off,” Azi replied. See? Hearing problem. He never seemed to understand what she was saying. Her sudden mood lift soured and turned stormy, tugging at the edges of her stomach and roiling dangerously, a storm of hooked barbs and ill will. “What’s with all the voice messages, anyway? Can you stop leaving fifty in a row, you asshat?”

“ _I’d stop if you actually ever answered me_.” Alder sounded petulant from 500 miles away. It wasn’t a good look on him but if Azi recalled, nothing was.

“I’d answer if you ever actually had somethin’ to say, asshat.” Azi scrubbed sandy palms against her shorts before unlocking the door of her apartment complex with a thumbprint; Byron and Cam followed in, scattering sand and bits of sea-grass over gleaming tile floor. Azi would probably get yelled at for that again. She kicked her door open, two down and next to the hallway window. Azi had worked hard for a ground-floor room. New-pulled skels didn’t last long on stairs, as it happened, and the elevators were always crowded enough that people complained when she brought them there.

“ _I got a new job,_ ” Alder replied. “ _Thought you might wanna know. It seems kinda sketch, though. If you see my corpse on the evening news, avenge me, a’right?_ ”

“If I saw y’body on the evening news I’d find the killer to give them a handshake and twenty bucks,” Azi ushered Byron and Cam into her apartment and kicked the door shut behind her. There was a black dent-slash-mark on the bottom of it where she kicked it open and shut. Azi reveled in the stability of it some more as she directed her brand-new skels along.

Azalea’s apartment was halfway between an epiphany and a greenhouse. She’d worked very hard to get it that way and worked even harder to maintain it; plants draped almost every inch of her walls and ceiling. Bones covered what the plants didn’t. Human bones, because in this house, you go hard. Animal bones were for cowards (ie, Alder).

“ _Fine. Fine. Whatever._ ” Alder hung up before Azi had the chance to hang up, which was just a fuckin’ shame, really. He’d always had better timing than her. In anything.

“I’m home!” Azi reached out to drum her fingers on the skull of the skeleton sitting at the kitchen table, which was just a folding table covered in drying plants. “Did you miss me?”

The skeletons hadn’t, but Azi was used to that. The plants had missed her; the morning glories in the tray by the window over her sink turned their faces to her and hummed. Azi wasn’t used to that, the feeling of being missed.

She couldn’t tell if she liked the warmth it gave her or disliked the weight of the responsibility it gave her. Azi had never done well with any kind of responsibility, which was to say, when handed responsibility, she tended to throw it away at the soonest chance she had.

“Yeah, you’re a real chatterbox, I know.” Azi picked up a watering can and went to work, mentally taking inventory.

Poisonous plants by the sink (was it too much to ask that one day she’d accidentally ingest a bit?). Oleander, manchineel, holly, morning glories, climbing poison ivy in a trellis around the window.

Cacti and succulents next to the window, under a heat lamp.

Spider plants _everywhere_ , cuz them goddamn things grew like god’s business.

Orange tree in the corner, just kinda chillin’. It never did give Azi fruit, but she didn’t mind. Most of them never did.

Azi also had five skeletons, counting her latest acquisitions. Cam and tall Byron, skinny Fen and chipped Aztec, and her first – stolen unceremoniously from a cemetery at 3 am on new year’s day; Searchlight. She was sitting at the folding table and reading a newspaper with eyes she didn’t have and an empty skull that couldn’t comprehend human words anymore.

“I got the job. Yeah, I know, y’all were nervous and all.” Azalea nudged a succulent over with her fingernail, turned it a little. It said thank you, the quiet, dusty way succulents talked. “Alder got one too. Fuckin’ deadbeat. Who’d hire the guy, y’know?”

Azalea hated Alder Parrish. He was her twin. Arguably, her better (smarter, safer) half. She hated him with every fiber of her being. Azi’d have happily killed him. With her bare hands.

Unfortunately, necrobotany ran in the family and necros were hard to kill. Alder was no exception. Azalea might have been half an exception, but only because she’d worked so hard so often to kill herself that half the time, she forgot why she was still alive.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t either.” Azi leaned back against the counter and pressed the heels of her hands against her eye sockets, relishing the dull sort of ache that sprang up. “I need the money for rent.”

Searchlight looked at her reproachfully. IF YOU HADN’T SPENT THE MONEY ON A RASPBERRY PLANT, WE’D HAVE GROCERY MONEY.

“But now we have raspberries instead of groceries! Don’t tell me that’s not a deal you’d take! It was ten bucks off, if you think ‘bout it, I was _saving_ money,” Azi argued, throwing her hands up.

THAT DOESN’T MAKE A LOT OF SENSE, Cam told her, in a whispery-quiet voice.

“It makes all the sense.” Azi waved a hand at her skeletons. She was right. They weren’t really people, just the imprint of what was left when a body was left to its bare bones. Usually new skels took more time to speak. Cam would be a chatterbox despite the volume, she could already tell.

WHAT’S THE JOB? Searchlight put the newspaper down, somehow conveying reproach through empty eyes sockets. Azi rubbed the frost creeping along her wrist and the heel of her palm, touched the frigid silver of her bangle.

“They want me to rob graves for them.”

OH, Fen said from by the sink

  1. Searchlight looked down, then up at Azi, and then picked the newspaper up again.



OH, Cam said, quietly and thin like a cold, insistent breeze. IS THAT SAFE?

“I guess we’ll find out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am filled with hubris and exhaustion and, after tonight's blackberry-lemon three-layer cake, sugar and i'm ready to fight god on my own terms


End file.
